NOTE: This manual is a work in progress. Please let us know if you think something is missing by filing an issue, or join our Discord server.

v0.0.14: Website, split Erlang library, proper exit codes, and better runtime support

  • erlang: the Erlang library included, with a lexer/parser/AST/printer for Standard Erlang, is now completely split from the Caramel code and will be published to opam shortly.

  • caramelc: will return exit code 0 if everything went well. Otherwise expect a non-zero status!

  • stdlib: remove dependency on the Erlang AST printer for parts of the runtime (like the recv function), and instead include the relevant .erl sources as part of the packed stdlib.

  • docs: better contribution notes, documenting the release flow and saying a word about the rationale behind it. I've also put together a small website for Caramel here: https://caramel.abstractmachines.dev

  • examples: the echo tcp server has been refactored to make it harder to accidentally override the gen_tcp module that is shipped with Erlang. We'll have to figure out a nice way to prevent these things from happening, which may just mean using all the modules on the Stdlib to avoid redefinition.

  • ci: several changes to CI to ensure we can release the erlang library to opam.

v0.0.13

  • erlang: prepare erlang library for initial release to opam.

  • erlang: add a new erldump binary that can be used to dump the parsed ast. This is currently being used for the tests.

  • caramelc: binary now exits with status code 0 only if everything went well.

  • ci: include necessary erlang artifacts in releases so we can publish this library to opam.

  • ci: prefix cache names with the secret version so breaking them is more effective.

  • examples: add new gen_tcp example.

  • docs: publish small website at caramel.abstractmachines.dev

v0.0.12

  • compiler: match expressions with cascading cases are not that straighforward to translate to Erlang and my gut tells me that doing the juggling here will get in the way of type-checking Erlang in the upcoming milestone, so this is forbidden as it is right now.

v0.0.11

  • compiler: preliminary support for guards is added in this release. They are "safe" as long as you don't redefine any of the expected functions. There is no good way at the moment to prevent this from happening, but we could achieve it by essentially forbidding the use of the module name Erlang and requiring all guards to be fully qualified names.

    This still leaves us with the issue of compounded guard expressions.

    At the end of the day, we want a function is_valid_guard : expression -> bool that can traverse an arbitrary expression and tell us if it is or is not a valid guard based on the specification found at the Erlang docs.

  • caramelc: the parse subcommand now can take a --lang and --tree parameters to print out the parse and typed trees for OCaml, as well as the parse tree of Erlang, and the parse tree of the result of compiling OCaml to Erlang.

    This is particularly useful for testing and understanding the AST translation, and will likely be used later on to see if the compile -> typecheck -> compile cycle yields the same inputs, and thus is an isomorphism.

v0.0.10

  • Add support for record updates (see #23):
{ my_record with field = value }

My_record#{ field := value }
  • Add tests showing that lambda function calls are now working as expected and will be called with the right number of parameters:
let f () =
  let g () = 1 in
  g ()

f() ->
  G = fun () -> 1 end,
  G().

v0.0.9

  • compiler(#12): the compiler will now let you know when you're redefining a function on the OCaml side, which is not allowed on the Erlang side and stop compilation.

  • compiler(#16): shadowing bindings with let are (for) now unsupported on the OCaml side, which makes translation runtime safe. We won't see any more X = X + 1 on the Erlang side.

  • compiler(#15): to help with #16, priming of variables is now supported and translated to valid Erlang. We can write x' = x + 1 and it will translate to X_prime = X + 1.

  • compiler(#13): recursive let bindings within a function definition are now not supported since they don't have a direct Erlang equivalent and require runtime overhead.

  • error messages have been created for all of the above

v0.0.8

  • stdlib: fix name of Io module so Merlin can pick it up properly.

v0.0.7

Better releases

  • compiler: automatic function reference arities! As see in #10

  • compiler: We're ignoring all fresh type variables when translating to Dialyzer specs for now. More work will be done in #20

  • caramelc: caramelc compile now supports multiple --target flags, so you can compile both archives and Erlang sources at once.

  • caramelc: standard library will now by default be in the respective installation directory (respecting dune install conventions)

  • stdlib: Process.spawn/1 has been renamed to Process.make/1 until we have support for module attributes (see #21)

  • stdlib: Dropped top-level namespacing until we figure out how it can work best with .merlin

  • ci: several changes to release flow, including a nicer folder structure in the tarball

  • ci: entire codebase is instrumentabled by bisect_ppx now to start gathering coverage reports

  • erlang: removed an unused helper

v0.0.6

  • Lots of work on the Stdlib, as visible in issue #8.

  • External definitions now can override the name they will use in the generated source code with their string value

  • Parser supports arbitrarily parenthesized expressions

The idea for this pre-release is to start testing out how the Stdlib feels to write some small programs and scan 1) whether some obvious FFIs are missing, and 2) how straightforward it is to write new ones.

v0.0.5

The internal modules for the compiler and the typing experiments are split now, and the Erlang support is unified in a single library that only depends on the standard library and the Sexplib library for deriving Sexp representations.

The goals here are:

  • make the codebase easier to hack on in general -- there's still work to do here, as I think the ideal structure would be flatter than it is right now.

  • prepare the Erlang library for continued work -- extending the lexer with positioning information on every read token will help parametrize the AST with contextual information. This would aid in error reporting.

  • establish clearer compilation and type checking paths:

    • from OCaml to Erlang,
    • from OCaml Lambda to Core Erlang,
    • from Erlang to Native binaries.

v0.0.4-triples

dist: use valid gcc host triples in release names

v0.0.4

First release shipping with a tiny Stdlib!

Now you don't really need OCaml installed for Caramel to be able to compile some ML and typecheck some Erlang

v0.0.3-musl

New release naming and a new linux+musl binary

v0.0.3

  • compilation should have much nicer errors when dealing with unsupported features and expression at the value and type level
  • new command for type-checking erlang: caramelc check
  • --target flag is now available, and supports core, erl and native targets
  • --dump-ast flag is now documented and hooked up to core erlang backend
  • string concatenation should support arbitrarily complex expressions now
  • license was updated in binary file to point to BSD 3-clause too

v0.0.2-bin

First release with caramelc binaries.

v0.0.2

First release.